Sales Development Glossary

Last updated: February 18th, 2019

Being ahead of the sales game means you are up-to-date with everything related to the subject.

Knowing all the trends, new technologies, what books to read and who to follow on social media — all that wouldn’t be of much use if you don’t understand the language and basic terminology used by sales development representatives.

So, to help you out, we built a list of the most commonly used terms by sales professionals today. Keep an eye on this article because we are going to update it very often with new terms and phrases to help you become a sales rockstar!

Let’s go back to the basics.

A – C

Account Development Representative – a sales specialist in charge of attracting, qualifying and securing new leads for further engagement and conversion

Account Manager/AM/Farmer – he or she is focused on managing and up-selling existing clients and accounts

Business Development Representative – also known as a Sales Development Representative (SDR). This representative is a sales specialist focused on finding new prospects, establishing foundational relationships, and updating the sales pipeline with new leads.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) – also known as lifetime value (LTV). The total lifetime value of one client in terms of revenue they’ll bring before they churn.

Customer Relationship Management/CRM – a software or Internet-based service that helps business owners and sales professionals manage their sales pipeline; track prospects and related activities throughout the sales cycle

Customer Success – a strategy and a proactive mindset that helps reduce churn rates, increase customer satisfaction with a service/product and the predictability of recurring revenue

D – L

Demand Generation – a marketing process with the purpose of building awareness about a company’s product or service

Drip Campaign – automated email campaign usually consisting out of several emails, that are sent out over a certain amount of time

Fortune 500 – A list of 500 of the largest companies in the US based on revenue

ICP – Ideal Customer Profile is a profile of an ideal client for your business

In-Funnel Ping – a nudge email that you send out to qualified opportunities for the sake of keeping the relationship warm

Inbound Sales – sales that happen as a result of customers directly approaching and engaging with the brand/company

Lead – a prospect that responded in a positive manner. This prospect has taken a specific positive action (for example replied to an email or registered for a webinar)

Lead Generation – all of the activities that have a goal to generate interest around a product or a service through different methods – content marketing, PPC, referrals, outbound marketing, and partnerships

Lead Nurturing – engaging and building a long-term relationship with existing prospects

Lead Qualification – a process of identification and determining if the prospective client is in line with the company’s ICP

Lead Scoring – assigning a value to every lead based on predefined criteria, in order to rank leads in terms of engaging priority

M – R

Market Response Rep/MRR – inbound sales rep that is responsible only for qualifying leads that are coming in

Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) – a lead that will most likely become a paying client, based on what pages lead visited, what action they took on the company website and other online engagement

Messaging – communicating your company and brand’s value proposition and what benefits you offer to your target audience

Metrics – quantities used to determine – business profitability, assess an individual’s job performance, and among others help predict revenue and create actionable strategies

Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) – the amount of regular and predictable income a company expects to receive every month

Negotiation – a discussion between two or more parties with the aim of achieving a mutual agreement

Net Promoter Score (NPS) – rating from 1-10 of customer’s satisfaction with the company and it’s product/service

Onboarding – a set of actions or a process of introducing a new client with a service or product. Setting up an account and introducing client with their point of contact at the company

Opportunities or Opptys – a qualified lead that is a good fit for your solution. An SDR has qualified this person as someone who fits your company’s Ideal Customer Profile

Outbound Sales – cold calling, cold emailing and social selling, with the goal of initiating contact with a prospective client and ultimately closing the deal

Point of Contact – a person or a department within a company that the client can reach out to with questions or specific requests

Predictable Revenue – a new sales framework created by Aaron Ross. This framework can help businesses create consistent year-over-year business growth. You can learn more about this unique system in our free course

Prospects – a list of names and contact information in some type of list, database or CRM

Referral – method of generating new sales leads, where the third party refers a company to the potential new client

Return on Investment (ROI) – is a metric, percentages, showing the percentage of efficiency of the initial investment. It is a ratio between net profit and the cost of investment.

Revenue – the amount of money one business generates in the specific time period (a year, a quarter…)

Sales Enablement – providing sales professionals with necessary tools, technology, training, and other resources in order for them to have better performance at customer engagement

Sales Funnel – a visual representation of sales processes with defined stages, that every potential client goes through as they are let towards a final decision – buying a product or service

Sales Kickoff – anannual event that companies often organize to talk about achievements, revenue, and goals and strategies for the next year

Sales Lead – a potential customer of the company; they might have expressed interest in the company or shared their contact information

Sales Manager – aperson in charge of a sales team, sales department in charge of implementing strategies and making sure that the goals are met. They also take care of developing successful salespeople

Sales Operations – aset of activities that one sales team has and follows so the sales processes run smoothly, efficiently and in line with the overall company business strategy

Sales Partnerships – relationship established between individuals and organizations to boost sales performance with the mutual goal in mind

Sales Pipeline – a visual representation of a sales process and stages of each individual prospect

Sales Process – set of activities that are aimed at driving sales growth – tactics, methodology, and technology that can help

Sales Productivity – metric that indicates how good a salesperson or department is at closing deals and generating revenue for the company

Sales Prospect – a qualified sales lead or a potential client that fits ICP of the company and will most likely become a paying client of the company

Sales Prospecting – a process of finding and identifying new prospecting clients using different outbound methods – cold email, social selling, advertising etc.

Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)- a potential client that already met all the necessary criteria, and is forwarded to Account Executive to close the deal

Sales Training – a process of improving sales skills, learning new trends and technologies that can help improve sales

Scraping – extraction of large amounts of data from websites

Seeds – according to Aaron Ross, the author of the Predictable Revenue book, one type of leads are seeds. These are leads that come to the company through word of mouth, PR campaigns, referrals. It takes time to generate enough of these leads, but in the end, they have the highest conversion and close rate.

Segmentation – a process of dividing a large market or a contact list into smaller segments based on different criteria – location, company size, revenue etc.

Social Selling – a sales tactic that involves using social media as a sales channel. SDRs engage and create relationships with prospects by probing their needs and providing relevant and valuable insight.

Spears – thesecond type of leads according to Predictable Revenue are spears, leads that are acquired through targeted outbound sales efforts

T- W

Top of the Funnel – a term that refers to the top of the sales or marketing funnel, where all prospects go through a qualification process, both from inbound and outbound efforts

Unicorn – a startup company valued at over $1 billion

Unique Selling Point/Proposition – unique features of a business that sets it apart from the competitors

Vertical – a specific segment of the market where a business targets only a specific industry, sector or niche.

White Label – a product or service that one business creates, and other businesses rebrand and sell as their own. This scenario is for the mutual benefit of all participants.

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Marketing Manager @ TaskDrive
Actively participating in the digital marketing world more than 5 years. Currently making sure that our website content is up-to-date and our blog is filled with easy and useful sales and marketing guides. Very passionate about dogs, topics on spirituality and Unicorns.

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